Forum Cleaning?

[johnjohn320]

Thread in OT got me thinking....

People often make jokes about how there are so many multiple-user accounts/dead unused accounts on these forums, and how we should just go through and delete all the non-active accounts. What's to stop the AT admin folks from doing this? It would increase speed and reliability, right? So why not?

 

[Hossenfeffer]

Perhaps the biggest, if not -the-, issue, is basically the time it would take to pare down the userbase. Who's going to do it?

You've got other things to at least "consider":

- Morons will continue to make "antagonistic, flame-bait and anti-mod/user" names
- Anandtech can puff up it's collective chest a bit by saying there is a registered user base of over 90,000
- If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I'm in favor of a cleaning, but mostly because I dislike extraneous schtuff floatin' around. If I had a dump of the user names/post count/registered date/last login/ etc, I'd be happy to do a cursory job, but who knows how easy that would be. Started going through once. Got through the middle of "a". heh

 

[Azraele]

Well said Hossenfeffer.
I'm in favor of a cleaning myself, but for the reasons you listed, I doubt it will happen.

 

[Alex]

also, if you clear old accounts whats from stopping a new guy to take a famous nickname that's been deleted and create a huge confusion...

 

[Hossenfeffer]

<< also, if you clear old accounts whats from stopping a new guy to take a famous nickname that's been deleted and create a huge confusion... >>

I'm assuming that most old accounts that would be cleared are at least 2 years old (or thereabouts) with zero posts thus keeping them out of the "famous nickname" category. Further assuming that if someone has a "famous nickname" (i.e. Red Dawn, Russ, etc.) then that would be at least a partial reason to not delete it, even if it was a bit out-of-date.

 

[AndyHui]

But who is to say that some accounts really are dormant? Take for example, Rain. Registered since Oct 1999, and he only posted just to prove that he has been around the longest with the lowest post count.

 

[Hossenfeffer]

That's where the "Last Visited on" date comes into play. Don't have to post, just have to show up in the last couple years.

 

[johnjohn320]

OK, that makes sense, but this is a forum full of computer geeks. Couldn't someone whip together a program in a few seconds that would go through the whole database and get rid of any names that have a "last visited" date before XX/XX/XXXX? They did it for PM's....

 

[johnjohn320]

Bump from the grave...

 

[networkman]

- Anandtech can puff up it's collective chest a bit by saying there is a registered user base of over 90,000

Sure, why not? The SETI@Home staff do the same thing, even though more than 1/3 of their "users" have never completed a single work unit.

 

[olds]

Originally posted by: AndyHui
But who is to say that some accounts really are dormant? Take for example, Rain. Registered since Oct 1999, and he only posted just to prove that he has been around the longest with the lowest post count.

Rain

 

[kursplat]

Originally posted by: AndyHui---But who is to say that some accounts really are dormant? Take for example, Rain. Registered since Oct 1999, and he only posted just to prove that he has been around the longest with the lowest post count.

better to hold your post and let others think your dormant , then to post and leave no doubt.

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: johnjohn320
OK, that makes sense, but this is a forum full of computer geeks. Couldn't someone whip together a program in a few seconds that would go through the whole database and get rid of any names that have a "last visited" date before XX/XX/XXXX? They did it for PM's....

delete t_member where datediff(last_visited_on,getdate())<-730)

there ya go 😉. depeding on how the db is set up, there could be a lot more to it than that though.

and I would tend to think that would take a lot more than a few seconds to run on a big database... and might need to be broken into chunks to not fill the transaction log. of course, there must be a reason they don't. advertisers probably like to see 90k members 😉

 

[Insomniac]

You just can't delete users. There is a larger issue. There are posts associated with users. Do you delete all of their posts too? Deleting things from a DB that are used as FKs is a very bad idea unless it is absolutely necessary. That is why they just disable accounts.